This application is based upon and claims the benefit of priority from the prior Japanese Patent Application No. 2001-295369, filed Sep. 27, 2001, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a variable gain amplifier used for cable broadcasting, radio communications, a magnetic recorder and so on, particularly to a variable gain amplifier provided with a dc offset canceling facility.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, it cannot be avoided in many amplifiers that the dc offset that is error components of a bias voltage and a bias current occurs in an output stage. So far various measures have been taken in order to remove this dc offset. There is, for example, an offset canceling system for removing the offset using a feedback amplifier circuit. In this case, the low frequency domain of the frequency band of a signal amplified by a predetermined gain (referring to as a lower limit frequency) fluctuates according to a change of the gain of the main amplifier. The frequency band of the amplified signal is narrower as this predetermined gain increases. Therefore, the low frequency domain of the signal that should be amplified at a high gain is not amplified, resulting in deteriorating quality of the signal.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a variable gain amplifier that can suppress fluctuation of a lower limit frequency according to change of the gain of a main amplifier circuit, and realize a good offset canceling.
According to the first aspect of the present invention, there is provided a variable gain amplifier device comprising: a variable gain amplifier circuit supplied with an input signal and a feedback signal to amplify a difference between the input signal and the feedback signal and output an output signal; a feedback circuit which supplies the feedback signal to the variable gain amplifier circuit; and a controller which controls the variable gain amplifier circuit and the feedback circuit to decrease a cutoff frequency of the feedback circuit with an increase of the gain of the variable gain amplifier circuit or vice versa.
According to the second aspect of the present invention, there is a variable gain amplifier device comprising: a variable gain amplifier circuit supplied with an input signal and a feedback signal to amplify a difference between an input signal and a feedback signal and output an output signal; a feedback circuit which supplies the feedback signal to the variable gain amplifier circuit; and a controller which controls the gain of the variable gain amplifier circuit and a cutoff frequency of the feedback circuit to make a lower limit frequency of the output signal substantially constant regardless of variation of a gain of the variable gain amplifier circuit.
According to the third aspect of the present invention, there is provided a variable gain amplifier device comprising: a variable gain amplifier circuit supplied with an input signal and a feedback signal to amplify a difference between the input signal and the feedback signal and output an output signal, a gain of the variable gain amplifier circuit being varied according to a level of the input signal; and a feedback circuit which supplies the feedback signal to the variable gain amplifier circuit, a cutoff frequency of the feedback circuit being varied according to variation of the gain of the variable gain amplifier circuit to make a lower limit frequency of the output signal substantially constant.